


Fight Like A Girl

by trace_of_scarlet



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Character Study, Gen, POV Character of Color, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-05
Updated: 2011-10-05
Packaged: 2017-10-24 08:28:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trace_of_scarlet/pseuds/trace_of_scarlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Character study: if each of the Torchwood girls is isolated and confronted by something from the Rift, how do they cope saving Cardiff whilst flying solo? Different women find different ways to win, but fighting like a girl doesn't mean you don't fight hard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Toshiko Sato

**Author's Note:**

> In which I make a very determined attempt to use the geography of my beloved home city and not cock it up the way the Torchwood writers do! ;) Betaed by my beloved Teaboy.

Tosh runs, high-heeled feet slipping and skittering out from underneath her. She feels vaguely guilty for running _with_ , not against, the flow of people running out of St David’s – certainly Jack wouldn’t approve – but after that time where she set off the door alarms in TopShop and got briefly arrested for having a handgun in her handbag she’s left her bloody weapon in the bloody car, hasn’t she? So this will have to be done another way, and for that she needs Wi-Fi.

Out of St David’s and left on the high street: if she turns another ankle she’s going to break something, so she ducks into the vaguely-protective space (allowing for week-old piss and month-old ex-burgers) of the doorway of the McDonalds and tugs off her shoes. She wonders where the hell she’s going to get quick-ish Wi-Fi that she doesn’t have to hack into in a city not exactly known for its technical wizardry, but then the beamy ‘FREE WI-FI’ sticker on the door catches her eye and she scoots inside, sliding into the nearest booth and setting up her laptop in a spot mostly free of food-related detritus.

Her glasses need cleaning of the muck from the explosion, but there’s no time for that now. She’s not sure how much time she has before the newcomer does something that even Torchwood can’t clean up – she’s betting she hasn’t got much – and McDonalds’ broadband is even slower than Gwen’s ability to take a hint. She’s already uploaded the video taken from her mobile phone so Jack knows exactly what’s going on, but traffic around the city centre is hellish at the best of times since they started the road-works around the castle and with the best will in the world none of the Torchwood team can possibly be here in less than twenty minutes. In twenty minutes, she is quite sure, there will be nothing left that any of them can do.

She is on her own. Well, it’s not like _that’s_ never happened before, and if Jack’s taught her anything (at least, anything nonsexual), it’s that there’s always a way. Tosh pinches the bridge of her nose and tries to _think_ as the ground rumbles and around her, the remaining terrified customers peer from where they crouch under the tables, baffled by the pretty young woman sitting so straight-backed (her mother always insisted on her posture) at the tiny laptop in the deserted restaurant.

The internet is frighteningly unhelpful: not even UNIT has anything on Cardiff’s latest alien visitor. Tosh cleans her glasses absent-mindedly, staring helpless and short-sighted at the minute computer screen, and curses the Rift under her breath in English and Japanese mingled. All this crap that comes through the Rift, day after day – why them? Why here? And why does it seem to always be a one-way street?

She freezes with one spectacle still filthy as inspiration hits like a bullet. Screams filter through from outside; ‘shut up, shut up,’ she mutters distractedly, fighting to keep a grip on her silverfish of an idea before it can wriggle away, and sighs happily as it steadies and crystallises in her mind’s eye. Sometimes she thinks she lives for moments like these, moments where she seems to float in glass, far away from the world, untouchable and supreme and seeing _everything_. She’s brilliant, after all, and she knows she is. Tosh enters a few commands and _clicks_ her laptop shut.

The laptop goes into her handbag and she dashes out into the street, her heels clutched tightly in one hand. She’s close, she knows she is, she just needs ... the cabling from the nearest junction box, which happens to be opposite the castle. Unfortunately that means running _towards_ the shifting, warping crack in space-time that her last few tapped-in commands have unleashed, but you can’t have it all, right? Left out of the door onto Castle Street, and the box she needs is a short way down an alleyway just past the ironically-named Forbidden Planet where a few stalwart (or more likely, petrified) geeks are huddling behind the window display in imminent danger of being buried alive.

The junction box is locked, of course, but the Swiss Army knife on her keychain has a Torchwood-specific little device to let her deal with that without fussing with hairpins. Working fast – at least this street is civilian-free, so no distractions – she rummages in her bag for her favourite mini-toolkit and carefully clips and tugs out the wiring and circuitry she needs. That wrapped around a half-forgotten ammunition clip (also from her handbag: Jack keeps calling it a TARDIS, to everyone else’s confusion) and lodged into one of her shoes to keep it all together... She’s about done, but she just needs one last thing: a bit of hasty wiring later, and the miniature battery from her laptop makes an excellent ignition source. Tosh straightens up, closing the box’s doors tidily behind her, and edges her way back to Castle Street and a convenient vantage point. She feels a momentary pang of heartbreak for her beloved shoes, but Jack will see to it she’s paid back and there’s always eBay. She draws back her arm, sights carefully – she is only going to throw a thousand-pound Christian Louboutin work of art once – and hurls one half of her favourite stilettos as hard as she can at Cardiff’s most unwelcome visitor.

The explosion is only a small one, but the creature is already struggling to avoid the Rift’s pull and a slight knock off-balance is all it takes. There is a horrible sucking noise, followed by a very final-sounding rumble as Tosh pulls out her mobile phone and enters the codes to seal this fragment of the Rift. She totters out carefully into the traffic-jammed street, lips beginning to curl upwards as she realises with growing certainty that she’s succeeded.

It’s a grin that broadens noticeably as a flash of lacquered red sole catches her incredulous eye and she spies a battered but otherwise perfectly serviceable example of Christian Louboutin’s very specialised genius, nestled smug and exhausted like driftwood left by the tide in the door of the castle’s gift-shop. She retrieves it, dusts it off and puts it back on her left foot, repeating the process with its partner before resettling her handbag on her shoulder and tidying her mussed hair. Her mobile buzzes belatedly with another phonecall from Jack, interrupted as she very firmly turns the thing off – all the better to stride away into the Queen’s Arcade and the remainder of her day off. Saving the world is all very well, after all, but right now the city centre is virtually deserted and Howell’s shoe department has a sale on.


	2. Gwen Cooper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gwen proves how to fight like a girl - hard.

Gwen doesn’t run, not yet. Whatever this thing is, it doesn’t seem to be deliberately causing damage, so there’s still a chance it can be reasoned with. Provided it can understand her, anyway, since she’s already called Jack and it seems very clear that the captain has absolutely no bloody idea what the hell they’re dealing with. Or what the hell _she’s_ dealing with, rather: Ianto is in West Wales on his day off (doing what, she didn’t ask), Tosh and Owen have gone to London to pick up some unknown but apparently vital pieces of equipment, and Jack can’t get the second bloody SUV started and is stuck down at the Bay. Unless he can get the train, anyway, and thus treat half of Cardiff to the sight of a berk in period military standing in a battered Arriva Trains Wales carriage and swearing his way to Queen Street station, which is admittedly a great image but still probably not worth getting half of Cardiff city centre destroyed for. After all, it would be a terrible waste of the brand-new shopping centre. Gwen giggles at that, which is a very unprofessional thing to do and she’d probably feel very guilty if she didn’t suspect herself to be several seconds away from an unpleasant extraterrestrial-induced death. So much for a quiet lunch with Rhys...

An ominous rumbling beneath her feet interrupts her thoughts and cruelly wrecks the careful landscaping of the Memorial Gardens. (Someone, in a few weeks’ time, will probably even notice the damage.) Gwen stares at the thing – now apparently attempting to snack on the City Hall’s doors – with wide eyes. What the hell is she supposed to do? It seems to be generating some kind of reaction in the Rift so she can’t just _leave_ it, especially not while it’s causing the sort of stampedes only normally seen in Cardiff while the Millennium Stadium is offering free international rugby tickets or there’s an all-you-can-eat sale on at Thornton’s – that is, never. She doesn’t feel particularly inclined to shoot it, either: if a human were to do that much damage to City Hall they’d probably be due at least a small ornamental statue, and anyway the poor thing is probably just lost and hungry. Besides, right now she isn’t even very clear on what precise part of it she should shoot _at_. All of which leaves her with basically one option: first contact. And she’s pretty sure ‘take me to your leader’ won’t cut it...

Every police training course she’d ever been on, back when she was a copper, said to put yourself on a level with the suspect or witness, show them you’re equal, make them want to be mates. It’s a load of bollocks, of course, but right now it’s the only idea she’s got. The problem is that even her favourite Faith boots with their three-and-a-half-inch heels won’t put her anywhere near on a level with this guy. What she needs is a platform – and ideally a megaphone as well, but let’s not get _too_ demanding here. Gwen looks at the cars parked outside the City Hall – one of Torchwood’s SUVs amongst them, thanks to a helpfully Tosh-forged parking voucher – and realises that she does at least have one out of the two.

She’s still not sure what she thought she was going to be getting herself into, back when she first joined Torchwood, but standing on the roof of a black Vauxhall Corsa (Z-reg) in order to make first contact with a very ugly alien lifeform before it can eat Cardiff city centre was definitely not even in the top one hundred. But before she can speak, her mobile buzzes self-importantly: it’s a text from Jack.

‘ALIEN HAS DESTABILISED THE RIFT. GET IT BACK IN OR KILL IT. XXXX JACK.’

Oh, _brilliant_. What is she, a traffic cop? Gwen clicks the phone shut and cups her hands around her mouth, taking a deep breath.

“OI!”

Okay, it’s not exactly the opener to a Martin Luther King speech, but at least it gets the alien’s attention and he puts the half-chewed door down, for the moment. Can he understand her? Only one way to find out.

“Do you mind?” she demands. “I expect you’re tired and hungry, but you’re making a right mess of my city!”

If BBC Wales are filming this and she survives she’s going to die of embarrassment at the 6:30 news tonight, but oh well: at least it’s stopped. Gwen takes another deep breath.

“Look, do us a favour and just head back the way you came, please?” she shouts. “And we’ll say no more about it, all right?”

The creature’s answer is pretty much emphatic, in that it throws the door at her. Gwen leaps down from the car roof just in time to avoid being flattened by twenty stone of highly-polished (slightly chewed) oak, feeling her knees squelch in what she hopes is mud as she rolls. So much for _that_ approach, then.

She pokes her head above the car bonnet briefly, clutching the wheel as the ground rumbles once again. Behind the alien she can see the Rift as it shimmers and boils in the air outside Cardiff Crown Court, hungry for something to close it. “All right, alien-boy,” she mutters, eyeing the shifting air nervously. “Let’s try it your way.”

Getting to the SUV requires some ducking and diving – since the alien now appears determined to play Whack-A-Mole with her head – but she finally hoists herself into the driver’s seat without mishap, fumbling for the keys. It occurs to her as she revs the engine that even if she survives and this works, it is going to flaming _wreck_ , but what choice does she have? The fate of the world could be at stake here. Rhys will kill her if she dies, though...

Gwen closes her eyes just a second too late to miss the impossibly confused look on the alien’s face when the car hits him. She doesn’t open them again until after the horrible sucking-scrunching noise has died away.

She has to force the car door open: when she manages it, she slides down onto suddenly wobbly legs to survey the damage. Half of the SUV’s bonnet has been ripped away to a destination unknown and the court’s steps will never be the same again, but at least the immediate problem seems to have been conclusively solved and the crack of Rift has been shut. Jack’s going to kill her, she realises dazedly, and bursts into slightly hysterical laughter.

She’s still giggling as she picks up her bag and switches her mobile off before heading into town, having decided that she’ll risk waiting until _after_ her date with Rhys at the New York Deli to see Ianto’s heartbreak at the remains of his favourite SUV. Still, it could be worse: at least it’s not raining.

Yet.


	3. Suzie Costello

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Suzie proves she, too, can fight like a girl.

Suzie stays quite still, for the moment. The wind picks up around her, plucking at her curly hair and whipping damp, cold air into her face and sputtering onto her glasses, making her lips twist with irritated disdain as she stares at the chaos before her. She’s aware that she should probably phone Jack, for information or at least to let him know what’s going on, but he’ll find out soon enough. Perhaps she can do without his interference, this time: it’s not as if it’s beyond her capabilities, but Jack has some half-arsed, idealistic views on ‘teamwork’ that he insists they all follow. But if he doesn’t get here... she can handle this her own way.

The ground rumbles underfoot, making the river’s sluggish waters churn and suck and the Stadium’s broken-umbrella spines wobble ominously. It must have destabilised the Rift somehow, perhaps because of its sheer size. One thing she will say for it, though: nothing else short of a nuclear strike or Wales versus England could have cleared Cowbridge Road so successfully on a Friday afternoon. The grime and the sludgy, sullen people of Cardiff irritate her, rankle like ants crawling over her skin: much better this way, even if the Rift-creature hasn’t made the weather any less shit. Cleaning her glasses, she wonders dispassionately how much damage it could do if she left it, how many people it would kill before UNIT turned up and popped it like a zit. She wouldn’t care – at least, not much.

More rumbling: the planking of the enormous walkway by the Taff strains and groans as if a camel’s-hair away from buckling. The sound makes her eyes focus and her face harden into stony determination: this is one more piece of shit spewed from the Rift, no more and no less. She knows how to deal with something like this – and shooting it definitely doesn’t even make the list. She’s been doing this job for a long, long time (it seems like forever, and maybe it will be), after all, and she’s experienced enough to know that a slightly more diplomatic approach is called for: speak softly and carry a big stick, or some bollocks like that. But first, she’d better get off this walkway before it collapses.

The bridge is not, perhaps, the perfect solution, but it offers more stability than the Millennium Walkways and its stone railings give her a platform to stand on, so long as she can hold onto a lamppost. She picks up a half-brick, dumped at the edge of the road with a load of other crap, and climbs carefully onto a position several feet away from the thing, surveying it – and the mess it’s making – with narrowed eyes. God, what a shitty job this is, she thinks, and hurls the brick at it.

Her throw is hard and accurate and clips the thing’s shoulder with what she at least hopes is bruising force; she smiles grimly when it turns to her with a wail. Suzie searches out its eyes with her own and holds their gaze with a kind of intense but sullen anger, and while it almost certainly couldn’t understand her if she spoke, it seems quite certain that it sees something in her eyes which frightens it. Frightens it (in the manner of a small child) too much to look away. It is, she thinks with another bitter twist of her lips, the only thing in Cardiff to have actually paid this much attention to her in a long time. Still, that will change soon enough.

Somehow she scrambles down from the wall without breaking the thing’s gaze, advancing on it. It must be at least twice her height but it skitters back nervously, making a noise somewhere halfway between a whine and a snarl. She reaches into her handbag and carefully, reverently withdraws a knife which gleams jaggedly even in the lukewarm murk of Cardiff’s November sunlight. It’s a beautiful thing – the first beautiful thing she’s seen today, but much as she wants to she can’t dwell on that now. She still can’t stop looking at it, but her eyes glitter in its reflected light, and the Rift-creature keeps moving backwards. It seems almost a shame to kill it, but she needs the practice. She’s going to do great things, wonderful things, and nothing can be allowed to slow her down, not even pity.

It is just out of view of Cardiff’s not-quite-ubiquitous CCTV – and almost in the Rift – when Suzie leaps to a windowsill and brings the knife crashing down on its neck.

Avoiding the sick bruise-coloured spurting of ichor has become a talent, by now, and she does so easily. It thrashes, but its reach is pathetically short, and she ignores its death throes once she knows that it cannot reach her. Instead, she focuses on cleaning that beautiful blade until it gleams once more and she can replace it ceremoniously in her bag, withdrawing instead the gauntlet.

It’s a funny thing, this gauntlet: as sickeningly grey as Cardiff in November and still the shining beacon of everything she hopes to achieve, believes she can achieve. She dreams about this gauntlet every night, sees it whenever she closes her eyes, and it is all she _wants_ to see. She slips her brown hand into its gloomy depths, lets her fingers wriggle delightedly and sees the gauntlet’s not-really-iron claws flex in response. She knows she probably hasn’t got much time left until the rest of Torchwood appear, shouting and clattering and smashing her beautiful silence, but still she can’t bring herself to hurry and spoil her little ceremony. The glove’s metal fingers rest like pincers on the Rift-thing’s head; she closes her eyes, breathes in, starting the internal count. She doesn’t need to open her eyes to know when it revives: she can hear its arrhythmic heartbeat reverberate inside her mind.

It lives for precisely thirty-seven seconds before its eyes cloud over again, murky as the Taff, but its heartbeat doesn’t leave her. Dead, it no longer seems to disturb the Rift, which closes with an anticlimactic sucking noise before her heavy-lidded eyes. She removes the glove – reluctantly, and with an effort – and straightens, tucks her treasure away safe in her handbag.

( _Th_ -dump-dump. _Th_ -dump-dump. _Th_ -dump-dump.)

Torchwood’s alleged second-in-command takes out her mobile and calls Jack. He is voluble but unsuspicious, and it is a relief to hang up.

The wind is blowing down the river again, taking pollution and seagulls with it. Suzie crosses her arms across her chest against the cold, but her mind is on fire and her face a mask as she awaits the roaring SUV, watching the red-lit sky.

( _Th_ -dump-dump. _Th_ -dump-dump. _Th_ -dump-dump.)

There’s a storm coming, she can tell.


End file.
